


Your Whole Heart is a Village

by returntosaturn



Series: Needle [3]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Contemplation, F/M, Sad, Tina-centric, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:03:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returntosaturn/pseuds/returntosaturn
Summary: Tina winds her fingers anxiously. “I…used to help my sister with this kind of thing all the time,” she offers, as if this qualifies her to linger unwarranted and test the inelegant, uneasy line that has been drawn between them.Leta glances up, exotic eyes scrutinizing. Then she nods, just a stunted little jut of her chin, and Tina gives a polite smile and moves behind her chair.// Tina and Leta interact the evening before the battle at Nurmengard, Tina gets vulnerable and uncomfortable.





	

England, 1945

The Scamander estate and its tens of bedrooms are fuller than any time over the past three decades.

Mrs. Scamander is elated and asks the House Elves to bring tea and biscuits and set the fires. But this is not a happy occasion. Aurors, of MACUSA and the Ministry both, and militiamen and volunteer healers crowd the halls and sleep on bedrolls and cots in the hallway when the bedrooms are full.

Tomorrow is the day. Everything will change. Wickedness will be challenged. Hundreds more will join them on the shores of the fortress of Nurmengard, and fate will hold the outcome. For now, they rest for strength and solidarity and to employ the very thing they fight for tomorrow: peace.

Tina makes her rounds learning names and passing out cocoa with the House Elves. She finishes her tray, left holding one solitary mugfull at the end of the hall, at the doorway to the bedroom she knows Leta Lestrange has chosen for herself. No one argued. Even Newt’s childhood bedroom had several of Tina’s colleagues bunking on the floor while the couple took the bed. Tina wondered if it was the name or Leta’s temperament that people chose not to contend with, or both.

Since they’d met in Paris a decade and a half ago, Leta had always swung along the spectrum of overtly happy or hostilely bitter. Any thought that there was anything like jealousy or affection for Newt still existing after all these years waned from Tina’s mind over time. It was just simply Leta, and while her skills in dueling and planning brought something to the table, Tina had learned to keep a distance and leave their conversations purely professional and shallow. It was best. 

It had been difficult early on to work with her husband’s old flame; to watch the skirted interactions, the stories she’d heard of the collapse of Newt’s school career and how this first heartbreak had changed his outlooks, now relived through the steely set of his jaw and mouth when he spoke with the woman. But Dumbledore had insisted, and so there was no case to be made.

She considers her options for a moment, lingering, testing. Then she swallows her pride and knocks three times before pushing open the door.

Leta is seated at the dressing table, beautiful face reflected in the looking glass, and Tina’s own image, standing over her shoulder in faded pajamas clutching a cooling mug of mollifying cocoa.

She steps in tentatively, closing the door behind her.

“I thought everyone could use something warm to drink. To lift their spirits tonight.”

She hefts the mug like a pint of beer, then feels entirely stupid when Leta’s expression stays stone-fixed.

“Um…” She steps forward, certain she is shrinking in height with every step, or at least shrinking in confidence.

She sets the mug at the edge of the table, where it would certainly be forgotten until morning.

A handful of glinting silver hairclips are piled at the edge of the table. The right side of Leta’s hair is twirled up in pin curls.

“Would you like some help?” she chances.

“I’m fine, thank you.” Its curt, but it isn’t firm. Its guarded. It’s a defense.

Tina winds her fingers anxiously. “I…used to help my sister with this kind of thing all the time,” she offers, as if this qualifies her to linger unwarranted and test the inelegant, uneasy line that has been drawn between them.

Leta glances up, exotic eyes scrutinizing. Then she nods, just a stunted little jut of her chin, and Tina gives a polite smile and moves behind her chair.

“Maybe just show me once, so I know how you do it.”

Leta does, and then Tina takes over, reminded moreso of her daughter’s wiry hair than Queenie’s silky curls. Mya and Simon are both in New York with the Kowalski family. Simon had practically begged to come along, but Newt met the argument with administering the job of watching over his little sister while Mum and Daddy were away. He’d agreed halfheartedly, but went along with whatever game Mya had concocted to play in the garden, and that was enough to symbolize his acceptance.

He’d loved Mya from the minute he’d laid eyes on her when they brought her home from that slum in India, and he’d taken on his brotherly duties like a mantle. But Tina swore he’d be sorted to Gryffindor one day, and that came with bravado he’d unfortunately inherited from her.

“I hope you know that we’ve enjoyed working with you, Leta,” she says. It isn’t a lie, even if it is an awkward point of conversation. Leta Lestrange is a fierce fighter and is cunning enough to track down enemies when Tina is at a loss for clues. Tina knows that many people have underestimated her, and this is partially what has driven her to the pendulum of emotion that swings within her.

“We value your input. All of us do.”

“Thank you.” Tina can tell she doesn’t believe her, or at least deflects the compliment entirely. “Do you miss your children?” she says after a few moments of silence.

Tina continues her work, picking up a new pin. If this is to be limitations of their conversations, she will work within that.

“I do. Very much. It’s difficult to be away, especially for this long, when Mya’s only just settling into a routine.”

“It’s honorable of you,” is all Leta says.

“Oh. People have said so before, but it really has nothing to do with that,” she answers politely. “We fell in love with Mya as soon as we saw her.”

“That’s not what I meant. I was speaking of sacrificing your family for the fight.”

She isn’t sure what to make of it. She isn’t sure how she means it. Is it pity, is it some distant sort of thankfulness that everything they’d grown could now be lost in the event of their deaths tomorrow? Is it honesty?

She swallows and continues pinning up her deep colored locks.

“It isn’t a sacrifice. It’s a duty.”

There’s a long pregnant pause, and Tina feels the threat of sudden, unwarranted tears. She shakes her head against the feeling.

“If we die tomorrow, it is so that our children and their children may have a better world. Everyone’s children.”

She hurries about her task now, because she finds that she does pity Leta. She has tried to justify the woman’s attitudes and break the blurry lines that their circumstances as wife and more-than-an-old-friend had drawn around them, but it has been in vain because Leta will never understand. She cannot.

She does not know Newt in the way Tina knows him. Now, the man he is. Not a boy. The pillar of knowledge and loyalty and intense, unfailing kindness he has become. She will always be on the outside of him. She does not know family. She does not know the laughter of children or the warmth of a husband’s embrace. And Tina is guilty to realize she is thankful that she doesn’t.

“We’ll leave early. Mrs. Scamander has asked breakfast to be ready at half past five.”

“Right,” the other woman says, and rises from her chair like the figure of a geisha, silky nightdress tumbling about her knees. “Thank you for the chat.”

“You’re welcome,” Tina manages to choke, hardly keeping her composure on her path to the door.

She leaves the room without a goodnight and with a desperate want for Queenie’s company, her daughter, her son, Newt. 

Newt.

She tiptoes past sleeping forms and snoring strangers for the stairway that leads to the third floor. Something leaves her feeling shamed and vulnerable as she tracks the hallways. She’d opened herself too much. She’d assumed observations were facts, and that Leta was stronger than rumor told her to be. She’d split a wound that still needed healing, unintentionally but stupidly, bruising both her instincts and her pride in the process. 

She pushes open the bedroom door, greeting by the slant of moonlight and three or so warm bodies sleeping soundly on their cots. Newt’s bronzey mop is cast to cooler tones by the moon, his body turned towards the wall in the single bed.

She slips around her peers and pushes back the covers to slide into her space beside him, winding an arm over his waist to pull herself in.

She nuzzles against the well-worn material of his blue pajamas, letting familiarity balm her worries. “Newt…” she whispers finally. She _needs_ to wake him. To watch his eyes in the darkness. To just see his face. 

“I’m awake,,” he hisses under his breath. “…when you came in…”

He shifts, turning around in the tight confines of the mattress to face her.

“Darling.” He’s already caught her. She curses herself for letting her emotions show on her face. She’s never been good at hiding that, and it doesn’t help in her line of work. 

“Are you alright?” 

“Yes,” she lies, not meeting his eyes. She tucks against his chest, fiddling with the buttons on his nightshirt. 

“Tina…”

“I want to go home,” she admits tightly, and it isn’t what she’d meant to say, but it _is_ true. In a sense. “I just want to go home…”

"Oh, my dear..."

He cradles the back of her head in his hand, lacing fingers through her hair. She burrows closer.

Newt, bless him, is gracious enough to believe it's jitters or at least doesn't press. Tina is content to let him think so, but when her resolve to hide has worn thin, she can't stop the tears that soak into his nightshirt.

"Shh, that's alright..." he draws the word out like a poem.

He allows her the privacy and discretion to cry it out, taking all the worries, fears, shame and sorrows for Leta into himself. Even if he doesn't fully understand. Even if _she_ doesn't fully understand.

"Tina..."

She lifts her face from his chest, and in his eyes she sees that she can cross worlds, finish impossible tasks, brave any foe. And there, she realizes she has already done all these things, with her husband, her heart, by her side. All hinging on his never-ending confidence in all things. 

She wants to cry all over again.

"You're perfect," he tells her softly, gaze trained to hers. It isn't a placation. It isn't an empty word that lovers give for the sake of it. He believes it, she knows.

She pulls him close, tucks her head under his chin. Tomorrow is another day entirely, and whether or not she thinks they’ll make it unscathed through the battle does not matter. Who believes in this cause they’ve committed themselves to, and how much, does not matter. The how and why of Leta Lestrange’s hardened heart does not matter, for that is hers to work out for herself. Nothing is promised past now, and nothing is certain on the other side of this war. But as long as her Newt can fix her with a look that says she hung the moon, she can try to make it rise for him each night from now until the end of their lives.


End file.
